This paper analyses the potentials and the preconditions of alternative forms of regulation against the background of Better Regulation in Germany. Today, almost every OECD- and EU-country runs extensive regulatory reform programs to modernize its regulatory governance structures, which are summarized under the label Better Regulation. The goal of this type of agenda can be regarded, firstly, as the business-friendly reduction of overall regulatory costs and secondly as the increase of regulatory efficiency by removing unintended side-effects. Better Regulation is a toolkit consisting of several meta-regulatory instruments, whose programmatic composition and use varies with the national political context. Moreover, within these parallel proceeding reform agendas alternative forms of regulation are constantly promoted by advocates of Better Regulation and portrayed as alternative to purely governmental command-and-control approaches (CaC), though neither responding to their preconditions nor addressing their consequences. According to This paper analyses the potentials and the preconditions of alternative forms of regulation against the background of Better Regulation in Germany. Today, almost every OECD- and EU-country runs extensive regulatory reform programs to modernize its regulatory governance structures, which are summarized under the label Better Regulation. The goal of this type of agenda can be regarded, firstly, as the business-friendly reduction of overall regulatory costs and secondly as the increase of regulatory efficiency by removing unintended side-effects. Better Regulation is a toolkit consisting of several meta-regulatory instruments, whose programmatic composition and use varies with the national political context. Moreover, within these parallel proceeding reform agendas alternative forms of regulation are constantly promoted by advocates of Better Regulation and portrayed as alternative to purely governmental command-and-control approaches (CaC), though neither responding to their preconditions nor addressing their consequences. According to the optimistic notion of an evidence-based regulatory management, the examination and analysis of regulatory alternatives is supposed to be carried out within regulatory impact assessments (RIA). However, hitherto alternative forms of regulations exist unnoted in the shadow of the standard cost model, RIA and co. and they are not systematically considered and applied by policy-makers. CaC-regulation is and remains the dominant and favoured policy-instrument of the state. Yet, there are several discursive connections including broad criticism on hierarchical-regulative steering, which give reason to the deeper analysis of alternative forms of regulation. Therefore the aim of this paper is to contrast alternative regulation with the criticized CaC-technique, whereas alternative regulation is defined narrowly as the concepts of self-regulation, co-regulation and regulated self-regulation which operate as cooperative substitutes of CaC between government and business. Moreover, this paper attempts to define and to categorize the diverse concepts and natures of alternative regulation. Subsequent to the theoretical part the preconditions and critical success factors for alternative regulation are identified in the next section. For this purpose two empirical case studies from two different policies, under which one is successful and the other has failed, are examined and compared to deduce success factors. The case studies are from vocational training policy (“The Training Pact of the German Business”) and waste policy (“refill quota for beverage containers”). The result is that alternative forms of regulation offer several potential und incentives for state and business actors, but that the use of these policy instruments is highly demanding and in addition only possible and recommendable in few policies. Undoubtedly its potential lies in the holistic reduction of regulatory costs (compliance and enforcement costs) and in the enhancement of the governability of the regulated business. However, the corporate actors on both sides are not always adequately prepared for this indirect mode of steering. Furthermore, alternative regulation is hindered by the fragmentation and weakness of business associations and opposing interests among the regulated sectors and companies, which may lead to free-riding and could result in the final failure of alternative regulation. The political communication and assertiveness of public sanctions as well as the measurement of success, which ensure self-regulatory compliance, turned out to be decisive, but very demanding constituents of success. Generally speaking, alternative forms of regulation emerge in those cases and policy areas, where concentrated resistance against planned CaC-measures becomes apparent, where a certain path dependency or history of sectoral self-regulation exists, and where a win-win-situation becomes obvious for politicians and business. To sum up, this paper argues that alternative regulations don’t emerge by a synoptic-ration model of policy process, but that they present an unintended product of garbage can like policy processes, further characterized by a high level of conflict. Consequentially, this paper’s findings disillusion the (exaggeratedly) optimistic notion of a rational regulatory choice inducing Better Regulation agenda.…